Well you know its that time of year again...well its that time of year every few weeks really but this is a bit bigger.

New CPU's from Intel are starting to get stocked and benchmarked now.

New Dual and Quad cores are coming in, all at the new 45nm with 1333Mhz FSB with 3MB/6MB of L2 Cache on the Dual Cores and 6MB/12MB of L2 Cache for the Quad Cores.

The new 45nm dual cores run faster, are more efficient, and have smaller and less noisy (not that they were loud to begin with!) heat sink and fans. The E8500 Dual Core which runs at 3.2Ghz (9.5x multiplier) with 6MB L2 Cache is one of the first to be reviewed for its overclocking potential and it certainly delivers! It was pushed to 4.2Ghz no problem at all, and topped out at around 4.4Ghz - bare in mind thats without any extreme stuff, just an X48 motherboard, good HSF and some patience. So 4Ghz is easily reached with the new dual cores, and at that speed it actually proceeds to beat the Q6600 and Q6700 in almost all real-world benchmarks for gaming.

The full lineup from Intel is looking rather promising and lets hope that they all overclock just as well as the E8500

RAM - DDR3 has been clocked above 2.1Ghz (well 1Ghz since its DDR3) which is pretty groundbreaking for consumer ram modules, although no word on the latency yet, hopefully DDR3 gets its latency down or its going to be pretty much useless for gaming >_<

GPU - GeForce 9's are out although surprisingly the first card out of the proverbial gates is not that 9800G2X like everyone had expected, but its little brother, the 9600GT. The 9600GT is Nvidia's new Mid-Range, which is a good thing because the 8600GTS was not cutting the mustard by any stretch of the imagination! It is a few fps (anything from 3 to 12) behind in most games / benchmarks compared to the 8800GT and GTS, but really comes head and shoulders above the 8600GT and GTS.

GPU - GeForce 9's are out although surprisingly the first card out of the proverbial gates is not that 9800G2X like everyone had expected, but its little brother, the 9600GT. The 9600GT is Nvidia's new Mid-Range, which is a good thing because the 8600GTS was not cutting the mustard by any stretch of the imagination! It is a few fps (anything from 3 to 12) behind in most games / benchmarks compared to the 8800GT and GTS, but really comes head and shoulders above the 8600GT and GTS.

AMD/ATI (which are the same group now) are sure in a bad posture. Intel Cores are just awesomely amazing, and nVidia's GPUs are spectacular. It would be definitely foolish to invest into AMD/ATI right now (except if you have a really good reason for it...)

Now if they could just get the quality of those games to follow the eye-candy.....

..and if they'd start programming for parallel processors and use a 64bit architecture... (not counting 64bit Vista which is mostly a joke).

Yeah - raw processing power for graphical and other calculations is going through the roof, but the programming techniques, the quality assurance thereof and the design is deteriorating, in my opinion.

But all these hardware innovations does allow us to browse these forums faster, so it is good for something

The real Intel refresh will come in fall, when a new socket cum processor (8 core "Nehalems") cum North-/Southbridge cum DDR3 cum new motherboards will hit the streets.
So it's then time for upgrade big time. Would be interesting to see what you still can use from your old system Well I hope at least the power supply still fits

I was thinking computer are using more and more power. It could get to a point where it will be to expensive to run your computer.

Not really, because we're making more and more progress in making the CPUs consume as much, or even less, then the previous ones. Power supplys have delivered pretty constant wattage over the last years.

Except, of course, for the hardcore gamers/professional graphists such as DD_nvidia who use 3 graphics cards at the same time. ^^

Well, if you are feeling adventurous and have an understanding family the April edition of Custom PC has an article describing how to build a gaming rig for £447 (incl VAT I believe). Specifications are:

Case: Coolermaster RC-330 V2

Optical Drive: Optiarc/NEC AD 7200S-0B 20xDVD±R

PSU: FSP Blue Storm II 500

Processor: Intel Pentium E2140

Memory: 2GB (2 x 1GB) Corsair TwinX XMS2 PC2-6400

Hard Drive: 160GB Hitachi Deskstar 7K160

Graphics Card: 256MB XFX GeForce 8800 GT

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-P31-DS3L

OS: Vista Home Premium 32 bit OEM

Heat Sink: Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro

The components were all sourced from Scan Computers. To quote very briefly from the article "this PC would elicit much laughter if it were reviewed by Custom PC at its stock speed... ...When it's overclocked to 3GHz ... this £447 PC is a monster".

If you are feeling less adventurous then the April edition of PC Pro has a group test of "Luxury £599 PCs"! Goodness, it doesn't seem so long ago when we were amazed at PCs costing less than £1000. £599 is a lot over-budget but as these systems come with monitors, speakers, keyboards etc. it might be worth checking out.

I wonder whether Gordon has an inside line he can share on any upcoming tests in PCW?

It's mainly for running Lightroom. In the past I did run a lot of racing sims on my PC (and helped to set up and run a race sim forum with 100000+ members) but I don't have much time for that now. I guess it would be nice to have the option though. The only real requirement I have is that the system is quiet. I am totally out of step with current PC technology so any help is greatfully received.

Hi Daniel, what do you think of the Q6600? I'm thinking of getting one for some tests in the magazine and it'd slip into my Asus P5W DH Deluxe no problem with a Bios update... I believe the G0 stepping - as you say - is the best bet.